Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday November 30, 2010 @06:35AM
from the this-is-what-happens-when-yo dept.

suraj.sun sends this quote from Engadget about improving the Kinect 3D video recordings we discussed recently:
"[Oliver Kreylos is] blowing minds and demonstrating that two Kinects can be paired and their output meshed — one basically filling in the gaps of the other. He found that the two do create some interference, the dotted IR pattern of one causing some holes and blotches in the other, but when the two are combined they basically help each other out and the results are quite impressive."

It is definitely possible to use some narrow bandpass filters. In the infrared region there are various filters for available that have a wavelength window of 10 nm at 1000 nm. These filters are not available at Walmart, but they are not too costly either. Depending on size, quality, wavelength and other parameters you should be able to buy some for $50 (Thorlabs).

To actually hack the Kinect you have to test, whether there are other infrared filters used and if the camera is sensitive enough at different wavelengths. I don't think the properties of the reflecting materials should be of any concern. The reflection of materials in a household room should not change for a small frequency difference in the infrared region.

Using a time-multiplex approach with shutters or just software which switches the cameras on and off might work well in theory but should be rather impractical to do without significant changes to the Kinect hardware.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't work very well. Light tends to lose its polarization somewhat when it bounces off of things. In a theater that's OK because you can use a special screen that maintains the polarization. Band limiting each kinect would be more effective than polarization (and would also scale better - polarization only allows for 2 kinects; the bandpass idea would only be limited by how good your filters are).